Tuesday, 30 June 2009

Further to my recent post about musicals, here’s another one, except like an M Night Shyamalan film from the olden days when he was good (i.e. The Sixth Senseand… er… that’s it), there’s a clever twist! Yes viewers, this one’s about films being turned into stage musicals, and the merit, or lack thereof, thereof. Don’t blame me for poor sentence construction, that’s the English language for you.

You may or may not be aware that some satanic fiend in a dank corner of Hades is fashioning a Broadway musical based on the Spider-Man films called, bizarrely, “Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark”. Well the first thing that springs to mind is “erm, what?” and the second thing that springs to mind is “I wonder what to have for tea”, because this seems to me like such a bad idea that it warrants no further allocation of brain juice. And so that you don’t have to, let me investigate further on your behalf, metaphorically taking the bullet like Clint Eastwood in InThe Line Of Fire, only marginally less grumpily.

I think what’s happened here is that the makers have spotted the recent “success” of the Lord Of The Rings stage musical and thought, “hmm, massively profitable movie franchise based on much-loved literary legend becomes bowel-looseningly expensive stage show which ran for about four performances and lost millions... we should do that again!”

Just to ensure that we all think it’s a terrible idea from the off, they’ve given it that spectacularly woeful title. I mean, just what does “Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark” mean? You can’t “turn off the dark”, even if you do have superhuman strength, the ability to cling tenaciously to any surface and a subconscious precognitive sense of danger. You can reduce the level of darkness by, say, turning on a light, but that’s nothing special. I could do that if I really concentrated.

And if that wasn’t enough to guarantee an empty house on opening night, the music is being written by Bono and The Edge. I have about a thousand words to express how I feel about that, but there isn’t room here. Fortunately a picture can speak a thousand words, so:

I ask you. He actually looks like one of those drunks who leap into the shot just as you’re about to take a nice holiday snap.

Anyway pay no attention to my rambling; fork out a small fortune to go and see it when it plops out onto a Broadway stage next February and let me know how good it is. If it’s fantastic I’ll turn green with sickness and gobble my words up. In fact, you could say I’ll be Green (and) Gobblin’! AHAHAHAHAHA!!!!